Another open letter to all Australia, New Zealand & the wider Asia-Pacific digital, direct and data-driven marketers.

As we start 2010, I thought it is critical for all marketers to understand the basics of the term ‘Marketing Automation’, as thereSTILLseems to be confusion in the market as to what the term means, why’s marketers need it, how it works, and what will happen if they don’t start using it.

What does the term ‘Marketing Automation’ mean:

‘Marketing automation’ is the termed used in the industry to describe the use of a marketing automation database to manage and automate the process of converting prospective customers into actual buyers.

By automating the various tasks and workflows involved in demand generation, lead management, and sales and marketing alignment, a marketing automation database contributes to shorter sales cycles, increased revenue, and better marketing ROI.

A Marketing Automation Database allows a marketer to execute and manage the following all in one centralised database:

A Marketing Automation Database is NOT a customer relationship management (CRM) database. A Marketing Automation Database is a SEPERATE marketing database that holds all of the above marketing and behavioural data and integrates with a customers CRM database which holds the customer’s sales and customer service and support data.

The term ‘Marketing Automation’ is designed to meet the specific needs of marketers and involves a holistic approach to generating, nurturing, and converting leads into customers by automating a variety of marketing techniques (e.g. email, Website\monitoring, landing page optimisation, and more) and ensuring marketing and sales alignment throughout the process.

In the last 2 weeks here is a list of questions that I’ve heard from digital and direct marketers and their agencies:

1.)

Q. Why should I change? What will happen if I don’t?

Your email marketing, paid search, paid display and web analytics data is all sitting in disparate databases and typically in an aggregate data format. So how can you possible determine what a prospect or customer is doing down to an individual level.

For example, lets say you want to run an email campaign. You segment your data in your email marketing database, dump in your creative and then hit the send button. What comes back is metrics on opens and click-thrus. Where this fundamentally FAILS is that once that prospect or customer clicks from a link in your email to either a landing page or your website you lose complete visibility at the individual level. So now you look at the number of click-thrus from your email blast and compare that with the aggregate web analytics data of unique visitors and assume the spike in traffic is as a direct result of your email blast.

We as marketers should be embarrassed if this is the way we are still measuring the performance of our digital campaigns. Why? Because the technology to do this exists and there are many companies in Australia & New Zealand using it!! Its called a Marketing Automation Database!

So what happens if you don’t embrace it? The Marketer will eventually lose their job or the agency will lose the client as their level of measurement and analytics are not up to scratch with the industry’s best practice.

2.)

Q. How does the issue impact my industry? What are my peers and competitors doing?

A marketing automation database is a fundamental requirement for every digital marketer who want to effectively track, score, measure and optimise their campaigns. The companies who use this technology and the actionable data insight to optimise their campaigns will simple produce better conversions and campaign ROI.

A number of your peers and competitors are already using this technology here in Australia & New Zealand producing ROI numbers as high as 4000%.

3.)

Q. Are there best practices I can refer to? Which experts can help me think strategically?

Success breeds success. So who is going to add the most value to your project. Quite simply, the stand out leaders in the space.

5.)

Q. What if? What if end users won’t adopt the new process?

With any new technology comes the adoption issue. Historically, this issue was very big a few years ago because the marketing automation software vendors that existed back then had developed user interfaces that were very difficult for a marketer to navigate through, thus creating an adoption problem.

What we’ve seen change dramatically in the last 12 months is new marketing automation databases on the market like Marketo who’s user interface is by far the leader in usability as well as functionality.

Lastly, with any new implementation change management is critical. Therefore, regardless of what type of solution you end up selecting it is critical for the vendor or their partner to provide you with a change management plan and approach to ensure success.

6.)

Q. Why should I trust your company? How long will it take me to get an ROI?

You should trust the company and the team that has the most experience and successful track record in this space.

Results will always speak for themselves.

Your ROI can be acheived within 1 email campaign as we recently saw with a customers first email campaign. There first campaign generated such a high ROI that they were able to pay for the marketing automation database for the next two years.